[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses:, Britannica to stop printing books

[Robin McCain]

I don't think it is pity to reduce an 800 word article down to under 200 
words. Instead of something readable you end up either with a Who's Who 
entry - filled with insider abbreviations and obscure wording that must 
be decoded or something so bland it has no value to anyone intrested 
enough to look it up.

On 3/14/2012 4:41 PM, foundation-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Dear Robin,
>
> There are several reasons for making a text not too long. Pity with
> the reader is one of them.
My point here is that even Brittanica is inherently very English 
centric. Why should an obscure ficticious 17th century event in the U.K. 
be of more value than an equally obscure event in Honduras (or 
wherever)? If I were living in Honduras, I'd be much more interested in 
MY local history - which is quite likely to be relevant to my situation 
instead of something in a country I'd never visited. Inverting the 
situation - If I visit the U.K. I want to be able to access information 
on the event in the U.K. but I don't care about Honduras.  This is an 
ordinary person's perspective - not that of a scholar searching for 
obscure information wherever it may be.

> I personally try to be reluctant with generalizations about Wikipeda
> language versions. They usually are not true. It's often like the
> thing that the grass in the neighbour's yard is greener.